Digital computing technology in the USSR: Stages of science and technology policy

The paper is an attempt to systematize projects for the development of digital computing technology based on the science and technology policy adopted in the USSR. The socio-economic and technological imperatives that ensured the emergence of new computers, their production, element base and architecture make it possible to identify the periods with the characteristic features of science and technology policy in this area. These periods differ from the generally accepted division of computers into generations. We have taken into account two paradigms of technology development: "immanent-technical", or internal, and socio-economic, or external, and based on them have distinguished three stages in the development of computers in the USSR: the first, from their emergence in the late 1940s to the mid-1960s; the second, from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s; and the third, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. In this paper, we will reveal the content and specifics of each stage.